Charles Kong Soo

As part of the UK Magna Car­ta 800th An­niver­sary Com­mit­tee's ac­tiv­i­ties in pro­mot­ing the un­der­stand­ing of Magna Car­ta in the Com­mon­wealth Caribbean, renowned Trinida­di­an phi­lat­e­list and nu­mis­ma­tist Al­bert Syd­ney has draft­ed sev­er­al stamp de­signs for Caribbean gov­ern­ments to con­sid­er.

Com­mit­tee chair­man Prof Sir Robert Worces­ter said he was in Trinidad to hold talks with a pop­u­lar ca­lyp­son­ian on pro­mot­ing the prin­ci­ples, aware­ness and un­der­stand­ing of Magna Car­ta via ca­lyp­so, as dif­fer­ent gen­res of mu­sic such as rock were used in dif­fer­ent parts of the world to high­light the com­mit­tee's ac­tiv­i­ties.

Worces­ter was speak­ing to the Sun­day Guardian yes­ter­day morn­ing at the Hy­att Re­gency in Port-of-Spain. Lat­er in the evening, he was the guest speak­er at the launch of the Com­mon­wealth Caribbean lec­ture and sem­i­nar se­ries at The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) Learn­ing Re­source Cen­tre, St Au­gus­tine.

UWI St Au­gus­tine has been award­ed a grant by the com­mit­tee to sup­port the work of the uni­ver­si­ty in pro­mot­ing the un­der­stand­ing of Magna Car­ta in the Com­mon­wealth Caribbean.Worces­ter said Eng­land will com­mem­o­rate Magna Car­ta with a col­lec­tion of mint­ed coins and print­ed stamps for the event in June 2015.His lec­ture ranged from free­dom, democ­ra­cy, the rule of law, hu­man rights, stature in so­ci­ety, gen­der, race, colour and sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion.

Worces­ter said the first clause of the 1215 Magna Car­ta stat­ed the Eng­lish church shall be free and pro­claimed re­li­gious lib­er­ty. He said that find­ings showed that the ma­jor­i­ty of peo­ple in T&T said that all re­li­gions should be taught in schools. Worces­ter said the Magna Car­ta was Eng­land's great­est ex­port as it af­fect­ed the lives of near­ly two bil­lion peo­ple in over a hun­dred coun­tries through­out the world, and in­flu­enced con­sti­tu­tion­al think­ing.

He said ba­sic prin­ci­ples where they didn't ex­ist had led to the loss of lib­er­ties, hu­man rights and even geno­cide tak­ing place yes­ter­day, to­day and sad­ly, to­mor­row.Dr Hamid Ghany, se­nior lec­tur­er in Po­lit­i­cal Sci­ence and co-or­di­na­tor of the Con­sti­tu­tion­al Af­fairs and Par­lia­men­tary Stud­ies Unit (Cap­su) of UWI's Fac­ul­ty of So­cial Sci­ences, said he was very ho­n­oured to be in­volved with the project.

Trinidad was the first stop in the lec­ture se­ries in pro­mot­ing the un­der­stand­ing of Magna Car­ta in the Com­mon­wealth Caribbean and will in­clude Bar­ba­dos, Cave Hill cam­pus, Be­lize, Cay­man Is­lands, Do­mini­ca, Ja­maica, Mona and West­ern Ja­maica cam­pus­es), St Kitts-Nevis, St Lu­cia and St Vin­cent and the Grenadines.